Chandra Release - July 24, 2007

Visual Description: CL 0542-4100 & CL 0848.6+4453

 Chandra X-ray Observatory images of two galaxy clusters, CL 0542-4100 & CL 0848.6+4453, are presented as a 2 panel. These galaxy clusters are shown in different shades of purple, green, and pink, with bright spots scattered throughout the images like dim holiday lights of various sizes. These galaxy clusters are some of the most luminous objects in the universe, emitting vast amounts of energy, particularly in X-rays. These galaxy clusters are part of a sample used to count the fraction of galaxies with rapidly growing black holes, also known as active galactic nuclei (AGN). In the Chandra images of these two galaxy clusters, red corresponds to low-energy X-rays, the green to intermediate-energy, and the blue to high-energy X-rays. In each of these two fields, five AGN are found, although one of these may not be a member of the cluster. Many of the AGN are blue sources, as expected, since AGN are known to produce very high-energy X-rays. Little puffs of diffuse emission is hot gas in the cluster and other point-like sources in the image are nearly all unrelated to the galaxy cluster.